


All Action and No Talk

by onward_came_the_meteors



Series: October 2020 Prompts [24]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Deaf Clint Barton, Friendship, Gen, Misunderstandings, One Shot, POV Third Person, Post-Avengers (2012), Team Dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:54:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27176167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onward_came_the_meteors/pseuds/onward_came_the_meteors
Summary: Some parts of returning to human form take a little longer for Bruce.Like talking, for instance.
Relationships: Bruce Banner & Clint Barton
Series: October 2020 Prompts [24]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1947679
Comments: 9
Kudos: 40





	All Action and No Talk

**Author's Note:**

> Day 24, for the prompt "forced mutism"

The first sensation that Bruce became aware of as he regained consciousness was that he was being tossed into an empty cell.

Which did not make great first sensations, as it happened.

He couldn’t say he’d gone through this particular experience before—yes, transforming back from the Hulk wasn’t always (in fact, it was hardly ever) in an ideal location, and yes, he’d had his fair share of run-ins with people who preferred containment and loaded firearms to friendly conversation; but outright physical kidnapping and imprisonment? The Hulk didn’t really take too kindly to that. And the fact that he was still… he was still  _ him _ , was still Bruce Banner, even as the being-tossed-into-a-cell was going on… that was most definitely  _ not _ normal.

_ Maybe I was drugged. _

An interesting hypothesis, but not one that he had time to consider further before he was hitting the hard cement.

_ Ow. _ Bruce tried to get up, but the sharp ache blossoming all over his body kept him down.

There was the sound of a heavy door slamming, a metal bar sliding into place, something electronic  _ bee-bee-beep _ ing, and footsteps tromping away.

Bruce let out a breath. His eyes were facing directly down at the floor ( _ hmm, very gray, very much made of cement, both fascinating observations _ ) where his forehead was still pressed, but sitting up required energy, and the cooperation of muscles that at the moment were refusing to do so.

Maybe it would have hurt less if he’d been wearing anything other than a ripped pair of pants and the shredded remains of exactly half a shirt that was miraculously still clinging to him; if he had something as a cushion other than his own limbs. Unfortunately, the Hulk didn’t think too often about his personal convenience when exploding out of his body in the personification of sheer rage.

He let himself lay against the floor for a moment. At least it was cool, and solid. He’d had transformations where he’d come back to himself soaked with mud in the middle of a jungle.

_ Now to try and remember what the hell happened. _

People always told you to “go back to the last thing you remember,” but that hardly ever worked for Bruce. Possibly because that advice wasn’t meant for people who had two “you”s to be remembering things.

Also possibly because being the Hulk for an extended period of time tended to scramble with his brain, making the so-called recent memories that were floating through his head turn up as a university campus and a lab in a helicarrier and an abandoned road in the wilderness and eating breakfast that morning with the rest of the team.

So he decided to go backwards instead; beginning with him inside the cell (no clues there; move along) and continuing to the hazy fog of the Other Guy.

Well, he knew he had transformed. That was something. Obvious, but something. It didn’t feel like it had been accidental, either—those always had him waking up with a headache so blinding he could hardly see straight and a sinking feeling in his stomach like he’d plummeted off something too high and too fast.

And if he’d changed on purpose, that meant there must have been a mission.

And if he’d been on a mission, the only logical conclusion from there was…

As if on cue, there came a muffled groan from somewhere to his left, and Bruce rolled over on his side, propping himself up by one elbow to find himself facing Clint Barton, who was spreadeagled on the floor and swiping an arm across his forehead.

Clint’s arm smacked back to the floor and he blinked, spotting Bruce a second later. He pushed himself up to a sitting position, his eyes squinting at the harsh light from the ceiling.

Bruce tried to peer closer, just to check if Clint’s eyes were really as dilated as they looked from here, but they narrowed before he could get a good look, and he obligingly scooted away.

His back hit the wall behind him. The whole room was  _ tiny _ , to the point where Bruce wasn’t even sure if it was meant for two people. Tony had  _ closets _ bigger than this—and yeah, that was because he filled them with Iron Man suits, which did take up more space than your average wardrobe, but it was the principle of the thing.

Clint groaned again and let his head tip back like the strings in his neck had snapped. He’d recognized Bruce, so he likely had a grasp of their current situation, he just… didn’t seem to want to do anything about it.

Bruce opened his mouth to ask Clint if he was okay—he knew he’d only get a lie, but he should at least make the effort—but when he did, nothing came out.

He frowned. Tried again. 

_ Clint, are you o— _

Still no words. Just little exhales as his mouth formed around empty air.

_ Well. _

_ Shit. _

Clint wasn’t looking at him now, too busy staring around their cell in disconnected blankness (Bruce really could’ve spared him the trouble: a solid gray cube with a single door. A heavily blocked and barricaded single door that they weren’t getting out of without a blast from a repulsor or a kick powered by super soldier strength or a hit with a lightning-filled hammer—or a punch from a green fist). Which was good, because that meant he missed both the stunned expression on Bruce’s face and the instinctive touch to his throat.

Bruce tried a third time to make a sound— _ any _ sound—to no avail. His voice simply was not working.

This happened sometimes, after a particularly long or difficult transformation—whenever it wasn’t enough for the Hulk to hijack his body, he had to fuck with Bruce’s vocal cords as well. It didn’t usually take more than a few hours to wear off, and most of the time, well, it wasn’t like Bruce was  _ near _ anyone to be talking to anyway.

Or, at least, that hadn’t been the case before, but now he lived with the Avengers. Hell, now he was an Avenger. Fortunately, the few times this had happened since he’d moved in, he could either just sleep it off or let the others talk over him so that nobody noticed he wasn’t contributing much to the conversation.

And the others were  _ very _ good at talking over him.

_ Most of them, at least… _

Bruce glanced again at Clint, then quickly away again.

Barton was a great shot, and he was a loyal teammate, and the only one of them who could be trusted to fly the quinjet and  _ not _ crash it into a lake (Tony insisted it had been a demonstration of the jet’s waterproof capabilities, Natasha claimed that the stick had froze up, Steve refused to acknowledge the event entirely, Thor shrugged and maintained that if ships on  _ Asgard  _ could travel through water it was clearly their fault for not informing him otherwise, and Bruce just… well, he’d  _ warned  _ them that he didn’t know how to fly), but he was without question the last person Bruce would have chosen to spend an extended period of time in an enclosed space with.

They didn’t even  _ talk. _

After New York, Bruce hadn’t even realized that the blond dude living in the tower with them was the Agent Barton everyone had kept talking about for the entire first two days, until Natasha had yelled at Clint for something or other and Bruce had almost knocked into a chair. In his defense, it had been a very long two days, preceded by the almost literal end of the world. And now here they were, locked up together, and Bruce couldn’t speak. Fantastic.

Fortunately, Clint chose that moment to pass out again from whatever drugs their captors had injected him with that were evidently still coursing through his system. Bruce’s had burned off a while ago—he was surprised they’d held as long as they had—but the leftover post-Hulk exhaustion was almost as bad, and he couldn’t really find it in him to do more than sit there for the first few minutes.

After that, the dull gray walls started to get boring, and he stared instead at the only other thing in the room that held any relief from the monotony.

Clint looked physically okay—apart from being unconscious, but hopefully that would wear off soon enough. He was slumped sideways on the floor, one of his arms bent at an awkward angle under his side, and Bruce debated moving it before Clint twitched and Bruce froze. The usual scattering of small cuts and bruises speckled his exposed arms, but nothing seriously bleeding that Bruce could see.

Clint’s quiver was missing, probably along with whatever spy stuff he kept stashed on him. Weapons would’ve been the first things their captors took—a little unnecessary considering, well,  _ Bruce _ , but whatever made them happy.

Speaking of… why  _ had _ they been captured, anyway? Bruce could think of about a hundred reasons off the top of his head, but most of them could be written off instantly as paranoia.

It might’ve just been that they were the easiest targets— _ were they, though? _ —but if that was the case, surely the rest of the team would’ve come looking for—

_ Oh, come on. Don’t tell me this is a  _ hostage  _ situation. _

Unfortunately, the facts seemed to fit. Bruce, vulnerable from the transformation, would have been easy to grab, and if Clint—one of the only non-powered-up members of the team—had been nearby, well… It was as good a strategy as any when the Avengers were banging down your door and it was dawning on you that you were going to lose if you didn’t do something fast. No wonder they’d been shoved in here so hurriedly, why Clint’s dosage had been so sloppy, why this cell was barely big enough to fit the definition. 

Their captors had been desperate. 

Which could either mean really, really good things; or really, really bad.

Bruce stared at the ceiling and tried not to jinx himself.

A little while later, Clint woke up again. By this point, Bruce was not only standing, but pacing back and forth, back and forth, and silently poking at himself to stop because feeling like a caged animal was not doing much for the muted growling in the back of his head and transforming in this glorified box would most definitely turn Clint into a Hawkeye pancake, but still his feet kept moving.

He stopped when Clint’s eyes opened, though, and both of them stared at each other for a minute. Bruce wasn’t sure which of them was the deer and which was the headlights.

_ Please don’t be expecting me to say something. This is going to be such an awkward explanation. _

_ That I CAN’T GIVE. _

Clint looked Bruce up and down, but didn’t say a word, question or otherwise; and a split second later he was on his feet and heading over to the door, only wobbling a little. Whatever training S.H.I.E.L.D. had on how to shake off chemical inhibition, it was effective.

There weren’t many steps to go before reaching the door, and Clint eyed it with dark scrutiny for a moment before turning to Bruce expectantly.

_ Yep, it’s locked.  _ The words stuck in Bruce’s throat when he tried to say them out loud, though, so he just reached out and gave a demonstrative shove. The door didn’t respond.

Clint blew out a frustrated sigh and reached over his shoulder for his quiver, which of course was not there, and what was he going to do with it anyway? Did Tony design him a lock-picking arrow now?

Another sigh, and then Clint was looking at Bruce again, who shrugged and gestured over his own clothes-less and therefore supplies-less situation.

The thought came to him that he was rapidly running out of body language options he could plausibly use without looking insane, and he shoved it away.

Clint turned in a circle as he scanned the room again, and then with no warning leapt straight up and grabbed onto the grate of the ceiling vent.

This would have startled some kind of noise out of Bruce had he been able to make one. As it was, his eyes went wide and his hands awkwardly came out in case Clint was going to fall. He quickly dropped them—the ceiling was only about three feet above their heads, and Clint seemed just fine hanging up there.

Clint only poked around in the vent for a few minutes before letting go and landing smoothly on the floor with a shake of his head. Only then did Bruce have a clear view to peer up into the vent himself and spot the thick sheet of metal that effectively destroyed any hope of using the vent as an escape route.

_ Besides, that thing is  _ tiny.

Clint must have read that last thought on Bruce’s face, because he smirked his little I’m-a-secret-agent-and-I-know-stuff smirk that he and Natasha had matching.

That smirk faded, though, as he glanced up at the ceiling again, and Bruce followed his gaze back to the door.

There  _ really _ weren’t a lot of options. 

Bruce was so caught up in wondering how long shrugging and nodding was going to cover it that he almost missed it when Clint stuck his entire hand through the smallest gap in the door bars.

There was a wrenching sound, and Bruce reached forward to stop him because  _ Clint, you’re going to break your wrist, what the hell are you doing? _ but he couldn’t say any of that out loud—

—and Clint wasn’t listening to him anyway, because his hand was fiddling around with something making metallic  _ chink-chink-chink _ sounds, and with another series of clatters, Clint’s hand emerged again, pulling something out with it.

It was the little electronic lock, stretched to the very limit of its wires and still blinking from its touchpad. Bruce had a moment to widen his eyes at that before he noticed Clint’s wrist, which was rubbed red and raw.

Clint refused to make eye contact, though, instead twirling his hands in an  _ after you _ motion to the lock.

Bruce wasn’t Tony Stark by any means, but he knew the basics of how to break something apart. His fingers darted over the shape of the lock, pulling apart some pieces and sliding others together until he was faced with a screen that said…

Uh…

It said…

Bruce’s free hand scrabbled automatically for the glasses in his pocket, before it brushed against shredded fabric and skin peeking out, and he remembered that not only did he not have his glasses, but he also didn’t have any pockets, and barely any clothes.

He glanced at Clint out of the corner of his eye, wondering how in the world he was supposed to ask something this specific without speaking.

Maybe it had been long enough?

He opened his mouth and tried. No, it had not been long enough.

Suddenly, the weight of the lock was being lifted out of his hands, and Bruce looked up to see Clint tapping a few of the blurry red numbers on the screen before shoving it back at him.

Bruce wanted to curl up inside a little shell, but for some unfathomable reason, Clint didn’t ask, or even look like he was all that judgmental of him. In fact, the line of Clint’s jaw and the set of his shoulders seemed rather tense in themselves, but Bruce didn’t have time to wonder about that. He had to finish it up.

The lock clicked in his hands, and Bruce gratefully pushed the door open.

He couldn’t get into the hallway fast enough. He wasn’t claustrophobic or anything, but he was going to explode if he stayed in that cell for another second.

_ I just… don’t like cages all that much _ , he thought, glancing at the shadowy figure of Clint next to him like he could somehow transmit the explanation through their thoughts.

The hall was long and twisty and much less well-lit than the scathingly bright lights from their cell, which was at once an improvement and a leading contributor to the spike in Bruce’s pulse every time they turned a corner and one of the shadows seemed to move oddly.

_ Calm down. No need to ruin your stealthy escape by smashing out the entire side of the building. _

Bruce went to duck into one of the smaller hallways that branched off this one—the ones not unlike a back exit—when Clint stopped him with a hand on his arm. Bruce looked at him, and Clint jerked his head up to the ceiling a moment before one of the vents fell open and a familiar figure dropped down.

Natasha was wearing her regular mission-ready suit, but her face was streaked with enough grime and sweat that it was a fair bet to say that the fight was still going on outside of wherever this was. Her only reaction upon seeing them was to dip her head in a slight nod, which… well, Natasha.

“So you two actually got out on your own,” she remarked, her gaze passing over Bruce and Clint. “Huh.”

_ Don’t sound so surprised _ , Bruce thought, forgetting for a moment that he couldn’t actually say the words and mouthing them instead.

_ Shit. _

Natasha’s eyes snapped to him, and he shuffled his feet awkwardly and did his best not to look at her or Clint even though he could  _ hear _ the grin spreading across her face.

“You’re such dumbasses,” she finally said with a shake of her head that brushed loose curls across her face.

Bruce had a moment to register the plural before Clint’s hands were moving, signing something quick and irritated.

_ Wait, what? _

Clint caught Bruce watching him and frowned, tapping a finger to his ears and mouthing a phrase that Bruce had to concentrate on for a second before he could pick out  _ they took my hearing aids. _

_ They… oh, hell. _

Bruce mouthed back:  _ That’s why you weren’t talking? _

Clint nodded. His frown deepened.  _ Why aren’t you talking?  _ S.H.I.E.L.D. training couldn’t hide the genuine bewilderment on his face, bewilderment in which Natasha was taking great amusement.

Bruce looked helplessly at Natasha, who began to talk, signing with her hands at the same time.

“That happens sometimes with him. It’s a side effect of the…” She paused then, and Bruce wasn’t sure if it was because she didn’t want to mention it or because she didn’t know the ASL for “Hulk.”

He met Clint’s eyes, and the expression he saw mirrored his own. This was either the most well-thought-out practical joke the team had ever played on him, or Natasha had a point.

Bruce and Clint stared at each other for one moment.

Two.

Three.

Bruce could feel the corners of his mouth drawing up involuntarily, and Clint’s were too, and in another beat both of them were laughing; Bruce’s shoulders shaking with silent laughter as Clint overbalanced and almost fell against Natasha.

_ Maybe Clint isn’t the worst Avenger to get captured with. _

Bruce shook his head, the silent breaths still coming out of him as he glanced up and down the hallway for any enemies that might have caught them off guard.

There were none, but Clint still managed to calm down enough to sign at Natasha, and this time it was slow enough that Bruce could pick it out.

_ Don’t tell me this is a hostage situation? _

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
